adventures of a college girl out to change the world

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Today, at work, I asked for a promotion. I’ve been at my job for 3 months, as of this last week, and there are plenty of other people who could be ahead of me for this position. So, why is my manage considering me instead of someone else? Oh right, I went up and asked for it. Not going to lie, it was probably one of the most terrifying things for me to do considering some of the bosses I’ve had in the past, and people getting promotions or special treatment over me even if I was the one that deserved the break. However, my philosophy has always been to work hard and eventually, no matter how much it sucks at the time, it will pay off. I’m hoping that this is the case now. If I get this job finding a second job this summer will be ten times easier because my hours will pretty much be set. I could either aim for 2 full time jobs or 1 full time and 1 part time job. Over the summer, as much as it’ll suck not having a social life, I could probably do a job where I have doubles on the weekend and maybe one or two nights a week from May to August.

If I had 1 full and 1 part time job over the summer, and worked 25 hours at the part time for minimum wage I’d make enough in a month to cover my rent, electricity, groceries, gas and necessities. That would allow me to put everything from my full time job towards my $10,000 I currently owe Drexel. Over the course of the summer (approximately 3 months) I’d be able to pay off almost half of it, and if I got my stuff together for the garage/craigslist/ebay sales at dad’s and mom’s I could potentially make another $500-$2,000 which would put me well on my way to getting it completely paid off. This isn’t counting if my lawyer can find a way around the road block we ran into for my settlement. Maybe, I can make a deal with my parents that If I put $3,700 towards my Drexel debt this summer that they could match me with about 25% and put $900 each towards my Drexel debt. It’d put me at over half way towards paying it off. That’s definitely something I think I could be happy with. So, maybe I’ll talk to them about it soon. If anything maybe I could get them to do $650 each which would put me at $5,000 even for the summer. Maybe. We will have to see. I’d feel a lot better about it though if I could get it over half way paid for before the end of the summer.

Essentially, the thing I’m concerned about most right now is paying off my college debt because I’m not the kind of person who likes to be in debt. I’m a very stubborn and headstrong person and I don’t like relying on others. I tend to support myself and hate being given/handed things I feel I haven’t earned. However, recently I’ve been considering getting food stamps to make my life a little easier and save myself some money each month that I could put towards paying Drexel. If I could even put an extra $100 towards that debt every month I’d have an extra $600 paid off by the end of Spring semester. Definitely something I need to look into. Am I crazy for having to have all of this worked out? Maybe. However, I don’t want to have to worry about being in debt the rest of my life. I want to be able to put my income towards other sources like a family, vacations, my children’s future, etc… Wow, I sound completely insane right now. I better go to bed. Thoughts at 1am can lead to infinite wonderings.

The main basis for Occupy Wallstreet was that 1% of America held 90% of the wealth. The main complaint was that the 1% will do anything to keep their money away from the 99%. The 99% are everyday working people, who don’t necessarily live like a celebrity, but can live semi-comfortably, even if it isn’t always easy. If you think about it. We really are part of the 1%… America is part of the 1% of the world that has 90% of the wealth, and most Americans will do anything to keep their wealth away from the rest of the world. Before we go getting mad about our situations maybe we should be thankful for the fact that we have clean water, a roof over our heads and food to eat.

Like this:

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like perfect running weather to me!

I haven’t even started unpacking, and I’m itching to go out and run. I haven’t been super consistent with my running since I picked it back up, but everyday I get more and more into it. I’m getting back to where I don’t want to go a day without running, and I’m totally fine with that. I missed running, and getting out of the habit really makes it hard to get back in the groove of things.

I’ve never been the kind of person that likes the cold weather, let alone running outside when it’s cold out. It just kind of came out of nowhere. Oh well! Off to run! Then go see daddy ❤

Like this:

I love college.
I love being independent.
I love working towards becoming independent.
I love being so far from home.
I love the city.
I love my new friends.
I love this new challenge.

BUT…..

There’s nothing like coming home.

I missed my family, especially at Thanksgiving.
I missed my dog.
I missed my bed, one that doesn’t squeak and make loud noises and always has a nice warm dog.
I missed driving my car.
I missed having my mom make breakfast for me in the morning.
I missed my friends.

I’ve always loved flying, and yesterday was no different. Actually, scratch that, it was different. There was a huge sense of excitement in me because I was finally getting to come home after being homesick for a little over a month. When I got off the plane in Iowa I was literally shaking in anticipation.

My homesick kind of caught me off guard because I’ve always been really independent, and leaving home to go to school so far away really didn’t seem like a big deal to me. After thinking about it though, I’m pretty sure I know the reason. Losing my grandmother last fall was really hard, on all of us. It caused some rifts, some fights, and some of us to grow closer together. I think it was just the fact that I left so soon after that made it so hard.

Holidays have always been big in my family, we’ve always made them big affairs. Not only was this my first Thanksgiving away from home, but it was also my first Thanksgiving without grandma. Thanksgiving just wasn’t the same. I had a great time meeting all of Ryan’s friends, and his family was very welcoming, but it just felt off to me.

I’m so glad to be home for Christmas and New Years. I missed my friends, and am so excited to finally see them this month!

So, my first week of college is almost over… Like, in 2 hours it will be officially over. All I have left is English at 4, and then it’s officially the weekend. The last two weeks have been hella crazy, but at the same time they’ve probably also been the best two weeks of my life. I’ve met some great people, had some awesome adventures and I’m in college for god’s sake!

So, my great people….

The GBF
This is Ryan, he’s my GBF, I have succeeded in making him a Gleek. We spent 7 hours in his bed yesterday watching Glee and talking. Today, it was raining like a mo-fo, and we went puddle jumping (hence the crazy soaked hair and clothing). So yeah, we are pretty close.

Gattozzi is the one sitting next to me. We’ve had some pretty awesome adventures, and just in the first week. The other night we wandered around Philly until like 2 in the morning and sang disney songs. It was great!

Classes have been good, some of them have been mostly review, which I’m totally okay with, because I really need some review…

I don’t really feel like talking about classes yet, they’re kind of not really anything good though. I mean, they’re classes, but I haven’t really had a chance to really get into them yet. My UNIV 101 class was probably the best, everyone in there, but one are environmental science majors. I DON’T FEEL SO ALONE ANYMORE!!!!!!!

So yeah, back to the rain today… It was really warm, so we jumped in puddles and such. I got sooo soaked, and my glasses fell out of my bag, and kinda sorta got into a fight with a car and the car won…. I won’t get contacts until late next week… So yeah, until further notice I’m semi-blind.

I have to now get to class, I’ll hopefully have a better update soon. Toodles!

Like this:

This video makes a lot of valid points. Watching it brought me back to a conversation I had 2 years ago with the new associate principal at Boone High. We were supposed to be interviewing him on something for the school paper, and we got soooo off topic. First in the obesity epidemic in America and what causes it, then to how our education system is stuck in the 1900s production line education that is no longer working. Sure, some people test high in their standardized testing, but as this video shows, interest in school has gone down in correspondence to the increase of standardized testing.

I could not agree more with the point made here, there needs to be major changes in the education system if people want to avoid total failure, and creativity is almost totally extinct. There are a few students who survive the monotony, and even those ‘artsy’ students are now becoming very mainstream. No one thinks outside the box anymore, everyone’s done something someone has already done. Honestly, where is the fun in that?

Personally, I LOVE the thrill of creating something new and knowing it’s mine. Sometimes my best work comes out of a crazy jumbled mess, there’s plenty of order in chaos, you just have to know how to look at it. In the words of Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poets Society, “We must constantly look at the world from a different point of view,” or something along those lines. It is in fact sooo true, why would you want to look at something the same every time? There are no new ideas created that way. If you look at a picture of a scribble and all you see is a scribble, then there’s nothing special about it. If you look at a picture of a scribble and see an idea, that’s when your creativity blooms.

Creativity and change are two things that need to hit the education system hard. Not only that, while a degree is a very good thing to get, you are no longer guaranteed a job with one. This is why so many people are asking, “Why get a degree then, if I’m not guaranteed a job?” Good question.